Tuesday February 26, 2013

Q: How long have you been interested in design?Jason: I’ve been doing graphic design since high school but had an interest before I knew what graphic design was, probably since I was about nine years old.

Q: And what did you do before you were teaching at Yoobee? J: I worked at a print production company in prepress and a lot of those skills translate well over to the work I do now at Yoobee School of Design.

Q: What kind of work do you do outside of your job as a tutor? Jason: A couple of different things. I work for Gecko Creative doing some commercial work, some logos, packaging and signage. I also like making stuff that I like, making stuff for me.

Q: So what kind of things do you like to work on? Jason: I love American Football, anyone who knows me knows that the logos from that sport are one of the reasons I’m a graphic designer and a lot of my personal work is football logo based. A lot of my work has multiple strokes on it. Its something I find visually appealing.

Q: What software is your favourite to use? Jason: Adobe Illustrator, absolutely 100%. Everything you create in illustrator you have to work for, every shape you have to create for yourself.

Q: …and what’s your favourite font? Jason: Oooh, that’s a good one… erm… Akzidenz-Grotesk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akzidenz-Grotesk). I think that it’s beautiful, I love Helvetica too but there is something about the K in Akzidenz-Grotesk that makes it my absolute favourite.

Q: What’s the hardest thing about being a graphic designer? Jason: Designers block, you hear about writers block a lot but nobody talks about designers block. It’s often a little bit of self-doubt. Is this any good? Am I any good? And what if I can’t think of something in the allowable time frame? But that’s what keeps you on your toes, keeps you going.

Q: How do you get past that? Jason: You produce some work and you look critically at it. You can come back to work later and think, yes, that does stand up, maybe I am ok. It’s the fun of it but its scary. You are constantly evaluating and re-evaluating.

Q: What advice would you give to a young graphic designer starting out? Jason: You have got to WANT to do this. Being a graphic designer, illustrator or typographer is beyond a 9 – 5 job and my advice is it has to be something you are passionate about 24/7. You’ve got to eat, sleep, drink design. Do it if you love it!